Lady Gaga rules, Taylor Swift forgives at MTV Video Music Awards

Lady Gaga accepts the best pop video award for Bad Romance. Behind her is presenter Jane Lynch of Glee.

Lady Gaga swept the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday night, taking eight trophies including best video of the year. The outrageous singer picked up the biggest prize of the night wearing an outfit sure to anger the PETA-crowd: a dress and chapeau that appeared to be made of cuts of meat.

Another larger-than-life diva from another generation presented Gaga with her trophy — Cher.

Still, the eight-win sweep wasn't a record. It's short of Peter Gabriel's record of 10 awards in 1987, MTV officials said.

In an anticipated bit of drama for the night, Taylor Swift absolved Kanye West of last year's onstage sin with one somber song.

The 20-year-old delivered a poignant and powerful ode about West at Sunday night's MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles that, instead of criticizing him, sympathized with his difficult time in the spotlight and West's own admissions that his ego has often gotten in his own way.

"Thirty-two and still growing up now; who you are is not what you did," she sang softly, adding: "You're still an innocent."

Swift's dramatic performance delivered on the hype promised from a sequel to last year's incident when West marred Swift's acceptance speech for best female video by jumping onstage and insisting the award should have gone to Beyonce. In the aftermath, West endured intense backlash, despite an apology, as well as a serious dent in his career that has yet to be ironed out.

Last week on Twitter, West poured out his heart, again apologizing to Swift and adding that he had grown.

While Swift is known for skewering those who have done her wrong, for West, she offered an olive branch with her song, written earlier this year: "Every one of us has messed up too."

West, also in song, beat himself up once again over his misbehavior.

The Swift-West drama overshadowed the typical wild antics of the VMAs. The cast of Jackass got rowdy early on when one of the cast members stripped off his clothes onstage and revealed his underwear — made to look like a chicken, with one suggestive part.

Host Chelsea Handler also added to the bawdiness. A pretaped portion of her opening featured the host getting spanked multiple times by show participants in a backstage hallway before running into the recently freed Lindsay Lohan, who also gave her a swat. "Have you been drinking?" Lohan said. "Do you think anyone wants to work with a drunk? Take it from me! They don't!"

Upon winning the female video award, Lady Gaga gingerly walked on stage in a spectacular outfit by the late Alexander McQueen: a Victorian-inspired gown and a Mohawk feather headdress atop a long white wig, with monstrous stilettos that made her look as if she were on stilts.

"Thank you to all the gays for remaking this video over and over again!" she said.